Re: REGULATIONS FROM SCRATCH

[bflood@SLAC.Stanford.EDU (Bob Flood)]

>     Now, I get bored out of my mind reviewing vendor supplied dosimetry
>reports with pages and pages and pages of "Not Detected" data.  The problem
>(except for PET and some x-ray facilities) is no longer reducing doses to
>make them ALARA, but convincing workers of the need to return film badges on
>time even if the badges never show any exposures.  Instead of making real
>contributions to the safety of research, we have become radiation safety nags. 
>
This is what I referred to in a previous post as defensive dosimetry. Real
exposure is controlled today to a point where we have indeed become
"radiation safety nags," but...

Depending on whose figures you use, somewhere between 30% and 50% of those
people who are blase about returning the badge that always read zero will
develop cancer, and about half of them will die from it. Each one is a
potential lawsuit claiming radiation injury, and those pages and pages of
"Not Detected" serve to assure workers today that nothing unexpected is
happening and to help defend the employer later. Until the litigation
philosophy in America changes, employers would be foolish to abandon
radiation safety practices developed when occupational exposures were more
substantial. The plaintiff's dose is always a factor in every radiation
injury case, and having a measurement is always better than trying to prove
that a worker's dose "must have been zero because if he was going to get any
dose, we'd have given him a dosimeter."

The soap box is now available for the next user.

Bob Flood
Unless otherwise noted, all opinions are mine alone.
(415) 926-3793
bflood@slac.stanford.edu